While the Monica Lewinsky scandal is obscuring far greater
crimes of the Clinton administration, there are many
elements of this affair that serve to raise the deeper
questions Congress should be facing in any inquiry of
impeachment.

The latest development in the story has Lewinsky telling
Linda Tripp on tape that “I wouldn’t cross these people for
fear of my life.”

For fear of her life. Now, why would a former White
House intern once amorously attached to the president of
the United States fear for her life if she crossed “these
people”?

Obviously, Monica Lewinsky understands the way things
work in the Clinton White House better than most
Americans. That’s what’s so scary about this statement –
especially when you consider the long trail of unexplained
deaths associated with Bill Clinton.

Others have expressed similar concerns. I think of Luther
“Jerry” Parks, the former head of security for Clinton, who
moonlighted by keeping tabs on the would-be president’s
comings and goings for Hillary. He kept incriminating
photos and tapes of Clinton. When Vincent Foster turned
up dead in Fort Marcy Park in 1993, Parks told his wife he
was “a dead man.” A few weeks later, he was gunned down
— execution-style — on the streets outside Little Rock. I
think of Jim McDougal, the man who started the
Whitewater scandal by implicating Clinton in his illegal
banking and real estate dealings. He said last year he didn’t
expect to leave prison alive. Sure enough, he died under
mysterious circumstances in a Texas facility a few months
later.

Meanwhile, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris — no
Clinton-basher and hardly a member of the “vast
right-wing conspiracy” — testified before Kenneth Starr’s
grand jury that the White House had mounted a “secret
police operation to go around and intimidate women”
who may have been involved with the president. He has
written about this in his column in the New York Post, as
well.

I have some first-hand experience with the Clinton
intimidation machine myself. After being named
conspicuously to official White House enemies lists in 1994
and 1995, my non-profit, First Amendment-protected
organization was targeted for a political audit in 1996. Paula
Jones knows about that kind of intimidation, too.

But fear for your life? Is that a realistic expectation with this
White House? Or was it merely rhetorical overkill from a
naive, young former White House staffer?

Let’s think about the Paula Jones case, where all this
started. One of Jones’ star witnesses, Kathy Ferguson, was
found with a bullet in her head. It was ruled a suicide. Yet
the shot entered the back and side of her head in a way that
would raise suspicions anywhere but in Arkansas. Worse
yet, her suspicious boyfriend, an Arkansas state trooper
who believed Ferguson had been murdered, was found
draped over her grave a month later with a bullet in the
back of his head. That, too, was ruled a suicide.

Then, of course, there’s another former White House
intern, Mary Mahoney, who was murdered –
execution-style — one night in the Georgetown Starbucks
cafe she managed. Five shots were fired into her body. Two
other employees were killed with one shot each. No
neighbors heard any shots fired, suggesting that silencers
may have been used. The cash register was full of money
that was left untouched. Washington police have never
been able to solve this triple murder in a posh section of
the nation’s capital.

I have reports from sources close to Lewinsky quoting her
as saying she feared ending up like “Caity” Mahoney. Who
knows why Mahoney died? Who knows what she knew?
She is reported to be quite an attractive young woman who
worked in the White House around the same time as
Lewinsky. Yet, no one — not Kenneth Starr, not Congress,
nor any other investigative agency in government or the
press — has bothered to look into this suspicious murder.

I don’t know for sure if the Clinton administration really
poses a threat to anyone’s life. But I do know that it is a
regime that has no respect for civil liberties and one that
has the stench of death all around it. It’s no wonder
Monica Lewinsky feared for her life — and probably still
does.